Destiny 2 (PC) Review

Destiny 2 has been a mixed bag for me. For someone who has never had any kind of experience within the Destiny world (I never played the original) and coming into the second title after listening to my friends bang on about how good it was on the Facebook Messenger group chat, I can’t help but feel slightly let down by the online experience.

Let me paint a picture. Destiny 2 is a narrative led game. You are a Guardian with the objective of saving the world from a nasty bloke called Ghaul. He is the commander of the Red Legion, the main bad guys of the game and has attached a large spider robot thing to the ‘Light’. The Guardians are at an all time low, with power being stripped left, right and centre, and it’s your job to defeat him. It’s pretty basic when you pull back from it, but the story isn’t what Destiny is all about. It’s a multiplayer game after all.

The story isn’t very long, is pretty linear, and can be blazed within a few hours if you play it with friends. Parties for the majority of activities including the story line can be a maximum of three players. Why not four you ask, like most other co-op games? No idea, but it’s kind of rubbish. You need to complete the story to get to end game, which is where the grind really starts.

Throughout the four planets introduced to you during the story are public events, which sees an objective taken on by literally people who have populated that instance at that time. Sometimes they’ll be loads of you, other times just you. At the end you’re gifted with loot, and the level of that loot depends if you make the public event go heroic. They’re quite fun and keep the grind full of action.

There are other events like Adventure quests which are extensions of the story and a way to gain access to Destiny 2’s minimal lore. They’r essentially side quests. Go here, defeat these guys. Go there, pick that up, bring it back styles. These can be okay, and I’ve done a couple that I thoroughly enjoyed like the Vex robot who played music spawning in other enemies was fun nut others seem a little dry.

The others are called Strikes and Nightfalls, and this is where the real challenge begins. Strikes are basically dungeons, filled with mobs and mob bosses and generally a big boss at the end. These can be solo’d, but they’re much more fun playing with friends, again a party of three maximum. The best at this stage are Nightfalls, but you need to be 240 power level to take part in. These definitely have to be played with friends, and it’s basically a harder Strike. This time they they’re timed and add modifiers like needing to use particular ammo when cued, or running through light rings to increase time. At the end of these, expect some tasty loot to work towards your Light level.

The last is the raid, and at time of writing this review, still haven’t played. Okay, I’m not the best at Destiny 2 alright? But I can say from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty much a super difficult Nightfall, complete with stages and a max party of six players.

The grind isn’t as bad as it seems, and most of the time you’re expected to do some kind of gun play objective which kept me hooked. It makes completing the weekly milestone objectives for better loot way more interesting. The only issue with the endgame grind so far is the lack of things to do. The game has been out on PC for around a month, and it’s come to a time where most people are already finishing endgame. The DLC is due soon so hopefully that will open up some more tasks.

So let’s go into detail about this Light level. You have a player level which has a maximum of 20, but the most important thing is your Light level. Light is basically power, and the more Light you have, the stronger you are. Your Light level is worked out as an average from your weapons and armour, which also carry individual power levels.

However, weapons and armour also go into more detail. They range in rarities – from common through to exotic which is the best – and also carry secondary stats like mobility, resilience and recovery. You need to juggle these stats too to become the best. My popular character Titan class is a strong tank, so resilience and recovery are my best friends. The other classes like Hunter and Warlock go for others because they work best that way.

What niggles me is that you can only equip one Exotic weapon out of three and one Exotic armour out of five at any one time. The rest you have to settle with Legendary items. It’s a good way for players to really micromanage an inventory of equipped items, but I would rather in a game like this look baller in my cool looking Exotic items.

The worst thing I can say about Destiny 2 is the lack of community, and the fact there is no public chat in-game is diabolical. I know it’s a console port for the most part, except it looks super beautiful on PC, but the fact I can’t organise a party to do a Nightfall inside the game is shocking. It takes away that main component that makes multiplayer games like this a full multiplayer experience. I would love to type “Anyone up for the Nightfall?” into chat, meet some cool new people, add them to my friends list and meet them online again, but no. I can’t do this. Really missed a trick here Bungie.

Destiny 2 at best is a solid shooter with a decent amount of customisable options and the chance to really get in the zone with friends during crucial moments inside a Nightfall. Collecting new loot is always rewarding, as some look absolutely badass. But it falls down with the amount of endgame content at launch and the fact it’s near enough impossible to find new friends while inside the game. I definitely enjoyed my time with Destiny 2, and will definitely be investing some more time into the first DLC, but as of now, I’m finding it hard to hit that play button inside the Blizzard app.